This invention relates to a semiconductor light emitting device.
A semiconductor laser with a higher output power undergoes such degradation as catastrophic optical damage (COD) due to the increase of optical density and temperature in the light emitting portion, which leads to degradation in reliability.
To solve this problem, JP-A 6-188511 (1994) (Kokai) proposes a configuration of a semiconductor laser device with a ridge mesa. In this configuration, the ridge mesa is formed except in a region near the low reflectance side of the resonator, and a polyimide layer is provided near the resonator end surface between the electrode and the cladding layer so as to prevent the current from being injected into the neighborhood of the resonator end surface. However, in this configuration, there is concern about degradation in operating characteristics, such as increased threshold current and decreased efficiency.